After being forced from apartments, Pine Street residents ponder future

For the near long term, Manny Rebelo and Dennis Gosselin said, they were set. Their rents were paid through the end of the month. They would get their checks on the first of August and pay the landlord again. Then it went bad. Their landlord, David Colville, got in a jam with the c...

For the near long term, Manny Rebelo and Dennis Gosselin said, they were set.

Their rents were paid through the end of the month. They would get their checks on the first of August and pay the landlord again.

Then it went bad. Their landlord, David Colville, got in a jam with the city, Rebelo explained. On Saturday morning, the two maintenance guys told the residents of the rooming house at 372 Pine St. to grab their belongings and get out. Plywood went over the windows and doors.

Rebelo and Gosselin were two of the residents of 372 Pine St. They were left without a place to go after the building was condemned by the city and the building was ordered closed.

Though the closure order was for midnight on Friday, the men stayed in their single rooms — shared bathrooms down the hall — until early morning. Maintenance workers arrived early Saturday and told the men to leave.

“The maintenance guys told us the cops were coming, so we moved,” Rebelo said. “The police came. They thought there would be trouble, but there wasn’t. We got up and went.

“They told us that if we couldn’t find a place by tonight, to go to the station, they would hook us up.”

Rebelo and Gosselin were sitting in the shade on the sidewalk in front of their former home. They nursed 16-ounce cans of Natural Ice and carefully rationed the cigarettes they had: Lighting up, inhaling three or four times, then delicately knocking the burning tip from the rest of the cigarette and saving the remnant for later.

A neighbor came by with a plate of sandwiches and a big can of snack mix. He passed out the sandwiches and wished the men well.

“I spent four years in the Marines,” Rebelo said. “We used to load up nuclear weapons onto the planes. At first I was a grunt. Then they changed my MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) and I went to Whidbey Island Naval Base in Washington state.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know how I ended up here.”

Thomas Hankins joined Rebelo and Gosselin. Hankins, like most of the men in the boarding house, was getting by on disability checks from Social Security. Hankins explained that his eyesight is nearly gone. He struggled to read a letter from a friend in jail and then went to Rebelo for help making out the words he could not see.

Hankins lived at 372 Pine St. for seven years before being kicked out Saturday morning.

Page 2 of 2 -
“I don’t know what I’ll do," Hankins said. "I’ll probably get wet for a while. I have a few things I’m working on. I paid my rent. I don’t have money to pay again. When I get my check, I’ll be OK.”

He and Gosselin discussed where they would spend Saturday night. They worried about the thunderstorms they could feel in the air.

“Down behind Family Dollar, it’s not bad,” Gosselin said. “If you find a cardboard box, you don’t have to get wet.”

“When I moved in here, seven years ago, it was perfect,” Hankins said. “Now the fire equipment, the showers, nothing works. If you go back three weeks, everything was OK and then everything fell apart. I don’t know what happened.”

Luis Tirado joined them. He was carrying a large can of crackers. He offered some to the other men and then took one out that he ate in small bites. He sat on the can.

Tirado said he moved to Fall River in 1992 and worked on scallop and crab boats locally until he could no longer do the work. He moved to Pine Street on his release from jail a month ago.

“I have no idea what I’ll do,” he said. “I really can’t do anything for two weeks, until I get my check. After that, I’ll get a plane ticket, go to Puerto Rico to see my Mom.

“We’ll see what happens. It will get better. I believe that.”

When a reporter checked back Sunday afternoon, the men were nowhere to be found.

The shuttered property appeared to have been abandoned. But the signs that there had been an outdoor encampment remained: a sleeping bag and pillow on the walkway; empty bottles of Gatorade and alcohol were strewn about the yard; a container of cooked pasta sat on the wall near edge of the property.